KS5

KS5 AQA, OCR, Edexcel & Eduqas:

a Jazz Primer, part 1
Jonathan James
is a freelance
by Jonathan James
music educator
and teacher trainer
who works with
orchestras, concert
venues and a variety INTRODUCTION
of communities to
explain classical Jazz is an important area of study for A level across several of the boards. Like most musical styles, its
and jazz music.
evolution doesnt fall into a neat timeline. Instead, it is better thought of as a delta, where different stylistic
streams merge and separate. This two-part resource gives a birds-eye view of that delta for those new to the
genre, and for those who want to present helpful through-lines for A level learners.

This first part traces jazz history from its raggedy beginnings in the 1890s through to the gloss and
sophistication of swing bands up until 1945. The second part picks up from the rise of bebop and ends with
a survey of todays artists.

A Spotify playlist is also available for each resource, with benchmark recordings of the prescribed artists and
ideas for wider listening.

In each part, a brief outline of the main stylistic developments will be given, together with their key musical
features and the artists who exemplified them. This first resource relates to the following examined areas and
artists:

AQA AoS5 OCR AoS3 Eduqas AoSD

Louis Armstrong Jelly Roll Morton Ragtime
Duke Ellington James P Johnson Dixieland
Duke Ellington Early jazz
Bix Beiderbecke Big band (including swing)
Count Basie

Suggested further resources

The History of Jazz by Frank Gioia (OUP): a modern classic.

Hear me talkin to ya: The history of jazz by the men who made it by Robert Shapiro (Dover): a fascinating
oral history that helps students get into the thinking and vernacular of jazz.
Early Jazz: its roots and musical development by Gunther Schuller (OUP): Schuller is a heavyweight among
jazz historians, as well as being a composer and practitioner. His book was seminal in exploring the birth of
the jazz age, and he goes on to explore swing and later periods in subsequent books.
A great BBC documentary on swing, The Swing Thing, is available on YouTube.

WHENCE COMES JASS?

That was the quaint title of a seminal article in the New York Sun, written in 1917. Seminal, because it was the
Some believe jazz first to refer to the new music that was all the rage in the dance halls as jazz (or jas, jass, even jascz).
may derive from the
French jaser, to
chat animatedly. The article was notable for departing from the usual derogatory tone at a time when jazz was still a byword
for loose morals and licentious behaviour. In it, the writer attempts to capture the essence of the fascinating
new style:
Jazz is based on the savage musicians wonderful gift for progressive retarding and accelera-
tion guided by his sense of swing.

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The language is obviously very much of its time, but it does pick up on three important aspects:
Jazz has its roots in the music of African slaves.
It involves an improvisatory freedom.
Its driven by a strong sense of rhythm and pulse.

Not all of these are true all of the time. Ragtime involves little improvisation, for example, and the sense of pulse
in the blues can sometimes be quite wayward. And although the roots of jazz are mainly in African music, the
picture is more complex than that, as were about to see.

The musical melting pot of the 1850s

The first sounds of jazz are associated with African slaves as they struggled to preserve their culture on foreign
shores: the holler in the cotton field; the twang of a broken guitar; the lamenting line of a spiritual; or the chorus
of a gospel chant.

Other non-African ingredients need to be thrown into the melting pot, however, such as the white rural
entertainment traditions of the time. Cakewalk dances from the minstrel shows, as well as parlour songs, often
had a jaunty, oom-pah style accompaniment not unlike that of the striding left hand in a rag.

CODED LYRICS

A lot of early blues lyrics are bawdy, but shrouded with enough double entendres and local patois
to get beneath the radar. Similarly hollering solos in a work song could also be used to pass coded
messages between communities when communication had otherwise been barred.

Also popular in white society were sentimental ballads, many dating from the American Civil War. Their
simple pentatonic melodies and verse-refrain structures can be seen as distant cousins to the song form and
characteristics of the blues.

Much study has been made of how the hymns of the Celtic Protestant settlers, or the call-and-response style
of the white revivalists, might have impacted on the early development of the blues as slaves attended their
masters church services. Revivalists also accompanied their singing with foot tapping and hand clapping,
a staple ingredient of the gospel style. There may well be interesting parallels, but the performance practice
differs fundamentally.

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 THE PARENTS OF JAZZ
Blues and ragtime are the parents of modern jazz. They are an odd couple, with sharply contrasting features
despite their joint heritage. Blues is the laid-back partner of the two, with looser rhythms, messier structures
and more improvisation. Ragtime is chipper and urbane, with crisp rhythms and formal structures.

The blues

The blues have their roots in the Mississippi Delta, in the work-songs of those labouring on the railroads and in
the fields. Early blues were led by the voice, with minimal accompaniment on whatever instruments could be
found the broken, three-stringed guitar being the classic.

The geography of the blues is both a route to a particular time and place as well as a roadmap to the
human soul. (Martin Scorsese)

WC Handy (1873-1958) was instrumental in capturing those first sounds and their chaotic form, and
standardising them into the 12-bar structure that we take for granted today. The story goes that he was catching
some sleep at a rail station and was woken up by strange strains of music:
A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His
clothes were rags, his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of
the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularised
by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song too, struck
me instantly. Goin to where the Southern cross the dog. The singer repeated the line three
times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.

Handy, with his European training, took it on himself to discover more about the rural blues, to trace its oral
history and ultimately create his own version. This lifelong endeavour led him to call himself the Father of the
blues. The claim is extravagant, but certainly through him the country blues found its way into the mainstream
entertainment world, into the minstrel shows and black theatres of the day, and from there developed into the
so-called city blues, a more structurally consistent version of its rural predecessor.

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The urbanisation of the blues was also facilitated by the abolition of slavery in 1865, and the mass movement
north of black communities into the cities and towns in the Midwest and beyond. In the ghettos of these cities
the soul of the blues remained strong, an expression mainly of suffering and protest.

EARLY BLUES EXAMPLES

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) was one of the first blues singers to record themselves, setting up in
a hotel room with just a guitar and microphone. Listen to how loose the structure is on his song
Hellhound on my Trail.

Count the beats in each of the lines. In the first stanza there are the usual three phrases, but each is
a completely different length. That irregular pattern continues throughout. Theres no predictability
apart from in the harmonic progressions underneath.

Black Snake Moan by Blind Lemon Jefferson (a lot of early blues artists seemed to be blind to some
degree) is another good example of this rhythmic freedom. It also contains some risqu lyrics that
were so typical of the country blues.

Ma Rainey (1886-1939), the self-styled Mother of the blues, was the first female African American
professional singer to record blues tracks. She learned her vocal craft in the Baptist church and in
travelling black minstrel shows. By the time she was recording in the 1920s, the blues was a recognised,
popular form. Her recording of Runaway Blues is a great example of the AAB phrase structure and
features a typical bottleneck guitar solo.

Bessie Smith (1894-1937), the Empress of the blues and Ma Raineys successor, sings with the same
majestic breadth, but with a more sophisticated sound and focused vibrato. She takes Raineys
trademark moans and growls, and hones them into more artful bends and fall-offs. On the recording
of W Handys signature tune, the St Louis Blues, she is accompanied by a wheezing gospel organ and
muted trumpet. Notice how delayed the entry of the main chorus is.

Musical building blocks of the blues

Despite its erratic form, there are core elements to the blues style. The minor pentatonic is at the heart of the
folk blues style, as it is of so many folk forms. This is then is extended through adding another blue note which
bends into the 5th of the scale:

This is the most familiar form of blues scale, although there are also heptatonic and nonatonic versions, which
will be used more in later, bebop and modal reworkings.

A lot of the vocal and instrumental licks that are used as fills in blues accompaniment or as the basis of a solo
are derived from three- and four-note cells taken from this scale.

Harmonically, the blues revels in a clash between major and minor modes, and it is that harmonic tension that
is so fundamental to the intensity of the style. The dominant 7th is treated as a stable chord that doesnt need
resolution, as it would in a classical context. As dominant 7ths are built on major triads, if you put a blues scale
(the minor pentatonic) over the top, you are immediately going to create that clash between the major and
minor 3rds.

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 This clash can represented by stacking up the iconic blues chord beyond the 7th to a sharp 9th, here written
correctly as an A sharp over G7, but more easily thought of as a B flat against the B natural below.

VARIANTS OF THE 12-BAR FORM

The 12-bar form in its basic circular format will no doubt already be familiar to A level learners:

A I IV I I
B IV IV I I
C V IV I I (/V7)
Research project:
find and play the 8-
and 16-bar versions All of these chords can be voiced as dominant 7ths to give them that essential blues colouring. Students at this
of the blues. level should aim to be able to play both the blues scale and this basic 12-bar iteration in least six popular keys.

If activating the knowledge in a practical session, choose a nice, slow, rolling 12/8 groove to allow
time for students to be imaginative with their solo notes rather than relying on well-worn licks. Sing
the line first before playing.

This familiar chord progression can then be developed using the cycle of 5ths to pick up the harmonic pace
to two changes per bar, with a classic turn-around in the final bar:

A I I7 IV I V7 I7
B IV IV IVdim I III VI
C II V I I VI II V

There are, of course many variations on this. Its an excellent way of working through the cycle of 5ths in
different keys. The standard overlay of the text onto this structure would be AAB, with the second line being
an embellishment of the first:
A: Im hollerin bout my homework cos the sun is beatin down outside
A: Yeah Im hollerin bout my homework cos the sun is beatin down outside
B: Dunno how to do it and I guess thats why Im singin the blues

If performing in a group with a singer, the instrumentalist should aim to fill out the gaps in the vocals, picking
up on the mood and ornamentation of the singer. The big temptation is to play too much.

When the blues met ragtime

As the country blues found its way into the clubs of the southern cities of Kansas and New Orleans (the
Storyville district in particular), so it begun to be played by small instrumental combos, such as hot fives
(typically two clarinets, cornet, trombone and piano) who were also performing rags, cakewalks and other
dances. Its here that the blues was given a make-over, as it was shifted up-tempo and met with the tighter
rhythms and energy of hot jazz.

Joe King Oliver (1881-1938) formed his Creole Jazz Band in the early 1900s, and they quickly rose to be
the most respected jazz band in the south. He moved north to Chicago to record in 1920s, and their take on
the Dippermouth Blues is a classic, not least for Olivers much-imitated cornet solo and the very polished
ensemble. It set a high benchmark for other bands to follow.

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 Oliver reportedly played seated in a chair leant against a wall with a derby hat tilted over his blinded
eye to hide the scar. He also brought in the use of mutes, cups and bottles to jazz up his cornet sound.

In the first 12 bars of Dippermouth Blues, everybody is in typical Dixieland-style polyphony. The second verse One of Louis
Armstrongs
uses three-note stabs to accompany the clarinet careening around above. A typical series of solos follows,
nicknames
giving every member on the frontline a chance to shine. was Dipper or
Dippermouth.
THE NEW ORLEANS SET-UP

The King Oliver bands line-up was a standard one for early ragtime bands: piano, tailgate trombone, drums,
cornet, slide trumpet (a young Louis Armstrong), banjo and clarinet. Bands tended to average around eight
players, adding an upright bass or some extra line instruments.

The tailgate trombone got its name from the player having to trail on a tailgate when on a horse-
drawn cart in a procession. There wasnt any room for the cumbersome slide on the main cart.

King Olivers line-up was a development of the typical hot five band, and followed the same principles for
organising the material:
The piano holds the bassline and harmony, normally in a stride pattern.
The trombone both reinforces the bass and adds a countermelody to it.
The banjo strums rhythmically on every crotchet.
The cornet takes the tune, embellishing it.
The clarinet plays an obbligato line above, threading around the tune.

The level of group improvisation was impressive, with each player needing to find their space within a busy
texture. Solos were normally based on ornamenting around the root, 3rd, 5th and 7th of the chord, with passing
diminished chord shapes. It wasnt until the late 1930s and 40s that soloists started improvising over the
extended 9ths, 11ths and 13ths as the harmony beneath them expanded.

So far, the story has been about African American musicians, but as the New Orleans style gained currency, so
white musicians also tried their hand at it. The most celebrated example of this trend is the Original Dixieland
Jazz Band or ODJB, set up by the impresario and cornet player Nick La Rocca in 1917. The group was known
through its early recordings for its exuberant style and skiffle band effects (eg halfway through Livery Stable
Blues of 1917). Some found their sound too mannered and lacking in originality, but they were still a revered
band of the time. La Rocca liked to be known as the founder of jazz because of his seminal early recordings.
It helped sales, despite being a preposterous claim.

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 RAGTIME
In Storyville at the turn of last century, the whorehouses, riverboats and vaudeville clubs were alive with
raggedy music as honky-tonk pianos and hot fives knocked out one dance tune after another. Like its blues
counterpart, ragtime was initially seen as an unrespectable music. Eubie Blake, an early ragtime pianist,
describes getting caught by his mother when he should have been practising the classics:
Im in there ragging hell out of Trumerei [by Schumann] on the organ when my mother came
in and laid down the law: Tag that ragtime outa my house!

Yet for all its reputation, ragtime is a polite-sounding style when performed on solo piano, with a metronomic
pulse and simple structures. The sections in a rag relate proportionally to each other, and rhythm is straight,
not swung, the left hand tick-tocking regularly away. This is music you could boil an egg to.

Ragging was the Scott Joplin (1868-1917) said that its never right to play ragtime fast, and some early recordings can even
name for a lively sound staid compared to the breakneck speed were now used to. Listening to his own piano-roll of his
clog dance among
African slave breakthrough piece, Maple Leaf Rag (1899), you can hear how steady and measured it is. He recorded this
communities. just one month before his death.

The playful syncopation and memorable tunes appealed to a wide audience, including polite society. Ragtime
was the first black music to achieve widespread popular and commercial distribution. Scott Joplins publication
of Original Rags in 1899 played a big part in this acceptance, bringing the style out of the clubs and into
peoples living rooms (which were often equipped with either an upright or a square piano).

Key features of a piano rag

Strict, steady 2/4 pulse held by a stride pattern in the left hand (see below).
Raggedy, syncopated right-hand melody: angular shapes, often in semiquavers against quavers in the
bass.
Clear, symmetrical phrases, with an eight-bar antecedent-consequent pattern prevalent.
Functional harmony stressing chords I, IV, V and relative minor.
Recognisable, predictable structures, eg ABCB (NB the opening A section often doesnt return).
Each section made up of two (or more) ideas, related by key: eg AA-BB-A (just once this time)-CC-DD.
One of these sections (normally CC in the example above) would be cast as a trio, in a more reflective
mood and mostly in the subdominant or relative minor.

Heres an example from Joplins The Entertainer (1902) of a stride pattern in the left hand with the typical
syncopated melody. Notice the use of octaves to reinforce the melody and the chromatic passing notes, all
recurring features of a rag:

Joplin came from a very musical family. His father was an ex-slave who played violin, his mother sang and
played the banjo, and his brothers played the guitar. His dream was to take the ragtime genre and other jazz
dances (eg the Buckstep Prance and the Slow Drag) and elevate them into works that enjoyed the same status
as European forms. He even attempted a jazz opera, Treemonisha in 1907, which, much to his disappointment,
did not survive more than a few performances. It has since been revived.

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 CLASSICAL RAGTIME

Classical composers have been fascinated by rags and have incorporated elements of ragtime style
in their composition. Charles Ives composed 13 rags, Debussy includes a rag-style cakewalk in his
Childrens Corner suite, and Stravinsky dissects the style in his Ragtime for 11 instruments. Other rag
enthusiasts include Satie, Milhaud, Honegger and Hindemith.

Swinging the Rag: the next evolutionary step

Early ragtime stands out in jazz as being essentially a non-improvisatory form. Joplin was keen that everybody
observe his notated score faithfully. Inevitably though, the inventive New Orleans spirit would take over.
Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton (1885-1941) played a key role in loosening up the style, bringing in elements
of swing and embellishing the melody.

THE JELLY ROLL TOUCH

Compare the two recordings of the Maple Leaf Rag on the Spotify playlist, one by Joplin and the
other by Morton. You can immediately hear how Morton swings the rhythm and extemporises on the
melody so that its hardly recognisable. All that remains is Joplins phrasing and harmonic structure
underneath, with the stride pattern in the left hand.

Morton saw himself as one of the prophets of the new jazz age, playing and composing in a way that consciously
brought together aspects of blues, ragtime and the quadrilles of marching band music. He learnt his trade in
New Orleans before moving north to Chicago in the 1920s. A self-proclaimed inventor of jazz (the third person
to use such a title in this resource alone!), Morton was a larger-than-life character whose works quickly became
core standards in the repertoire.

Wolverine Blues and Black Bottom Stomp are two of his best-known standards. Wolverine Blues was
originally recorded by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (with Morton on the piano) and later by Morton in his
own version for solo piano. Black Bottom Stomp was recorded by his later band, the Red Hot Peppers, and is
a more accomplished arrangement, with frequent stop-time (off-beat hits in the band after sudden rests) and
solo breaks. Both are up-tempo rags that bring in some of the flourishes of the boogie-woogie style.

James P Johnson (1895-1955) was another important figure in bringing together early ragtime and swing.
Like Scott Joplin, he had a classical training and entertained lofty ambitions to create large-scale jazz works.
His four-movement Harlem Symphony shows how elaborate his compositions and arrangements would
become. However, he was essentially known as one of the best stride pianists of his day, and his Youve got
to be modernistic shows how dexterous his playing was. His pupils included Fats Waller, and he inspired a
new generation of jazz pianists.

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 SWING
Satchmo is short
for satchelmouth, Once the New Orleans sound had reached New York in 1915, jazz had become mainstream. After the First
an affectionate
World War, it was the dominant popular music style in dance halls and on the turntable. Its development
reference to
Louis generously accelerated as promoters, artists and bandleaders enjoyed the new boom, trying to outdo each other in
proportioned mouth. technique and artistry. One such artist and promoter was Louis Satchmo Armstrong (1901-1971).
He liked it as a
nickname.
Armstrongs rise from his tough childhood to being one of the most influential figureheads in the history of jazz
is the stuff of legend (and perfect for a short research project). He was mentored by none other than Joe King
Oliver when he joined his Creole Jazz band on slide trumpet (a sort of mini-trombone) in 1918. After moving
to New York, he was picked up by bandleader Fletcher Henderson, where he played alongside the virtuosic
clarintettist Sidney Bechet, before moving on to Bennie Motens Kansas City Band (that would later evolve into
Count Basies orchestra).

SWUNG RHYTHM

By the 1920s, the swung feel of the 12/8 blues had crossed into the straight world of ragtime. Jazz
from here on was rarely played in straight rhythms, even when notated as such. So, two quavers would
be interpreted in a swung, long-short triplet pattern:

Armstrongs own band, the Hot Five, was the one of the most sought-after small combos of the 1920s.
Recordings reflect how confident and melodic Armstrongs own solos were, such as the flowing opening salvo
to Cornet Chop Suey. The release of Heebie Jeebies in 1926 also stands out for Armstrongs break into scat
singing (at 1:50), the first recorded example of vocables of this kind. It gets more athletic on Hotter Than That
(1927). Ella Fitzgerald would later take this art to a completely new level, imitating all the different members of
the band.

West End Blues also is a good showcase of Armstrongs understated abilities as an improviser, this time back
on the trumpet. Earl Fatha Hines solo on the piano (at 2:00) sets the tone with unusually florid single-line
decorations, then Armstrong leans in with an eloquent, fluid 12-bar phrase in a sweet high register. It shows
exquisite control and taste.

Alongside Earl Hines and Fats Waller, Leon Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931) was a groundbreaking pianist and
cornet player, less so for his technique and more for his unorthodox curiosity in contemporary classical music,
such as the impressionists, Stravinsky and Holst. In a Mist is fascinating for its quartal, chromatic harmonies
and whole-tone thinking, all gleaned from listening to Debussys piano music. Bix may not have had the chops
(fast-fingered flashiness) of his contemporaries, but his unorthodox approach to harmony, including altering
the 5th of the chord and regularly extending up to 13ths, left a lasting imprint. This carried through to his cornet
playing where, aside from having a lovely mellow quality, Bix often chose subtly chromatic lines and favoured
passing through the 6th and 9th. His cornet solo on Singin the blues (at 1:03) shows off this lyrical style.

Like Joplin and Johnson, Bix too aspired to grander forms and talked about writing a jazz symphony.
Unfortunately, he couldnt write music, and so those dreams came to nothing. He is mainly remembered both
for his harmonic inventiveness and for the fact he was one of the first white musicians to win the respect of the
black jazz community.

9 Music Teacher March 2017

 Enter the Duke

Over the course of late 1920s and early 1930s, the busy lines of the Dixieland style were left behind as a
cleaner Chicago-style jazz began to dominate the scene. In the bands, the chirpy banjo was replaced with a
guitar, the double bass became a must-have in the rhythm section (releasing the trombone into different role),
and the horn section swelled. By the 1930s, dance bands regularly had three trumpets, three trombones, four
reed instruments and the usual backline.

As the bands grew, so did the need to organise the material more formally for them. The New Orleans spirit
of collective improvisation was replaced by charts, clever arrangements and a spick-and-span, tight sound.
Smudge an entry and you may not get rebooked! Composer-arrangers such as Paul Whiteman, Fletcher
Henderson, Don Redman and Duke Ellington stepped into the limelight.

The big band era is also defined by its leading front men and women, the crooners that helped soothe the
pain of the Great Depression with their balladeering. Al Jolson was one of the biggest of those early stars, and
his upbeat style was perfect for the first ever talkie musical, The Jazz Singer (1927).

Meanwhile there was a concern that big band jazz was going sterile as bands trotted the same numbers
night after night in the big city hotels. The raw edge of hot combos had been smoothed over and the music
parceled up as a commodity. Perhaps Duke Ellingtons early hit, It dont mean a thing if it aint got that swing,
was a comment on that.

Edward Kenney Duke Ellington (1899-1974) started off leading a Dixieland band but soon felt drawn to a less
hectic style, writing slow ballads with surprising contours and exotic harmonies. A Sophisticated Lady (1935)
is a good early example of the signature Ellington sound, with a close-voiced sax quartet in exalted harmonies.
Each chord is a treat. The Duke provides a sparkling piano transition to a tenor sax solo, accompanied by an
impressively hushed band. The bass is sparse throughout, and Ellington comments on the piano only very
occasionally. Its a masterclass in allowing space.

Duke Ellingtons avuncular manner and courteous leadership won him a lot of friends. He was disciplined,
critical but also sympathetic. He enjoyed collaborating closely with other songwriters and arrangers such as
Don Redman and Billy Strayhorn, and encouraged a whole new generation of players.

As more and more musicians turned to jazz and sought training, mainly through being mentored on the job,
so the technical demand in big bands from 1935 to 1945 increased. Ellingtons Ko-ko from 1940 testifies to
that, using a deceptively simple 12-bar blues structure and call-and-response effects. There are no solos, just
constantly interesting textures and punchy rhythms. The playing demonstrates the crisp attack and brilliant
ensemble that was now expected in that period. Swing had hit its stride.

The year 1940 is seen as a watershed for Ellington, as he returned to the RCA Victor studio no fewer than 11
times to record. One of the criticisms of Ellingtons plush orchestra at the time was that it lacked the vigour of
individual soloists that set other bands alight. So, in Cotton Tail (part of the 1940 recording legacy), Ellington
recruited Ben Webster, a trailblazing tenor sax player from the Kansas City band. It was an astute choice.
Websters gruff and full-throated solo added something new and vital to the sound.

Another leading light on the saxophone was Lester Young who played with the Count Basie band in Kansas
City. Basies band was arguably lighter on its feet than Ellingtons, favouring up-tempo numbers where the
Duke tended towards slower ballads. Lester Prez Young takes the first solo on Basies Taxi War-Dance (1939)
against stabs from the other horns and a boogie bass line given by Basie. On both this and Lester leaps in
(also 1939), he shows the sort of agility and some of the harmonic daring that was to characterise the thinking
of the next generation of bebop artists.

And that daring new step is where we will pick up from in the next resource.

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 SUMMARY
This overview has been an attempt to put some shape on the sprawl that is early jazz history, from its early roots
in minstrel shows and vaudeville to blues and ragtime, through to the peak of swing in 1945. The route so far
has inevitably left out many of the interesting sub-styles along the way and has focused necessarily on those
artists that are highlighted in the various A level specifications. It does reflect, however, how joyously diverse
and creative those first 90 years or so of jazz were, as well as laying down the foundations for the bebop
generation to follow or to rebel against, as we shall see.

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